Can Germany — and Europe — still catch up in digital technology? The prospects look promising if you ask the chancellor. As political tensions rise, Germany wants to make and enforce decisions independently, “in line with our values and security interests”, Merz said in his speech at the Digital Summit.

That, he told the business, trade association and government officials in attendance, is “the essence of digital sovereignty”. Above all, it requires a determined, strategic effort to build up domestic capabilities. Germany must be able to produce and control everything from hardware to software on its own terms. Merz laid out ambitious goals with passion — then added a caveat: “This cannot mean that we strive for autarky.”

AI as an existential question

Merz said he is seeking deep, reliable cooperation with “like-minded partners”, addressing in particular Canadian AI and Digital Minister Evan Solomon, who was in attendance. “It is our strategic responsibility to ensure that Europe plays a leading role in shaping technological change.” The chancellor became increasingly emphatic about the importance of laying the right foundations for the future. Digital sovereignty, he said, is becoming an “existential question” in the context of AI.

The changes will be dramatic, a shift of historic proportions. “We are not standing on the threshold of such a change today. We are in the middle of it”, Merz said. “The central question in the economic order is no longer: make or buy. It is: who sets the rules.” Dealing with the expected developments is not only a political or economic challenge, but a challenge for society as a whole.

And suddenly Google is sovereign enough

Just one robot handshake and a tour later, the ambitious Friedrich Merz — who had just called for a push toward digital independence — had become someone else. Asked about his ambitions and plans by Germany’s intelligence agencies, which apparently want to develop their new offline cloud solution with Google as a project partner, Merz emphasized “that Google also invests in Germany and Europe, and that we can enable European sovereignty here with an American provider.” For years, German and European providers have tried to compete with U.S. hyperscalers. One of their key demands has been that German and European institutions act as anchor customers to make those investments worthwhile. Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security and the European Commission are working on comprehensive sets of criteria specifying the security level a cloud provider must offer for different uses.

“European infrastructure”

But Friedrich Merz, whose Chancellery also coordinates the intelligence agencies, is undeterred: “This is not a fully integrated infrastructure; it is a European infrastructure.” Experts have been arguing over precisely these issues for years. U.S. companies have set up complicated structures to address, at least to some extent, security concerns about structural dependence or a “kill switch” scenario, in which government orders could lead to the cloud being deliberately shut down.

One thing is clear: No cloud service from a U.S. hyperscaler can go for long without provider updates — not even an “air-gapped” cloud, like the one Germany’s intelligence agencies want to use. Within a few months, they would have to find somewhere to migrate before the system became unreliable. For Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had just been so enthusiastic about sovereignty, there is no doubt: “I have a high level of trust in our agencies that the data we have there is safe and protected, even if, for example, an American provider builds a large cloud infrastructure, but it is secure for us.”

(mki)